The State of the Soviet Union

Worldview ◽  
1985 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 4-6
Author(s):  
William D. Jackson
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Average Rate ◽  
Annual Growth ◽  
Industrial Plant ◽  
Soviet Leadership ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Food Shortages ◽  
Per Capita ◽  
Time Of Troubles ◽  
Per Capita Consumption

The 1980s have become and are likely to remain a new “time of troubles” for the Soviet Union. Principal among these troubles is a faltering economy. The average rate of annual growth for the Eleventh Five-Year Plan (1981-86) is likely to be just over 2 per cent, half the rate achieved a decade ago; and die productivity of both labor and capital in industry during the first three years of the present Plan actually declined. Although investment in machinery production has increased by more than 20 per cent—a key element of a strategy designed to accelerate the modernization of an aged industrial plant—the growth in production of new machinery remains at a postwar low. Increased investment in agriculture has also produced disappointing results, and food shortages in cities are likely to recur in '85. The Soviet leadership must be equally troubled by the fact that, despite rising consumer expectations, growth in per capita consumption during the first three years of the present Plan has averaged a mere 1 per cent—a sharp contrast to the 4-5 per cent realized during the 1970s.

The Standard of Living in the Soviet Union, 1928–1940

1998 ◽  
Vol 58 (4) ◽  
pp. 1063-1089 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert C. Allen
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Capita Consumption ◽  
Index Number ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
New Information ◽  
Alternative Approaches ◽  
Per Capita ◽  
The Difference ◽  
The City ◽  
Per Capita Consumption

New estimates of the growth in total and per capita consumption are developed for the Soviet Union during the first three Five-Year Plans. These estimates show that consumption per head rose 27 percent from 1928 to 1937. The gains were confined to the urban population and to those moving from the countly to the city. In the standard interpretation, per capita consumption fell in the 1930s. The reasons for the difference in interpretation are examined in detail. The estimates presented here are based on new information and on alternative approaches to valuation and index number problems.

A Sacred Space Is Never Empty

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victoria Smolkin
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Sacred Space ◽  
Russian Revolution ◽  
Mikhail Gorbachev ◽  
Soviet Leadership ◽  
Sacred Spaces ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Communist Ideology ◽  
History Of ◽  
Soviet Experiment

When the Bolsheviks set out to build a new world in the wake of the Russian Revolution, they expected religion to die off. Soviet power used a variety of tools—from education to propaganda to terror—to turn its vision of a Communist world without religion into reality. Yet even with its monopoly on ideology and power, the Soviet Communist Party never succeeded in overcoming religion and creating an atheist society. This book presents the first history of Soviet atheism from the 1917 revolution to the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. The book argues that to understand the Soviet experiment, we must make sense of Soviet atheism. It shows how atheism was reimagined as an alternative cosmology with its own set of positive beliefs, practices, and spiritual commitments. Through its engagements with religion, the Soviet leadership realized that removing religion from the “sacred spaces” of Soviet life was not enough. Then, in the final years of the Soviet experiment, Mikhail Gorbachev—in a stunning and unexpected reversal—abandoned atheism and reintroduced religion into Soviet public life. The book explores the meaning of atheism for religious life, for Communist ideology, and for Soviet politics.

RESTORATION OF THE INFRASTRUCTURE OF YALTA IN 1944

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (72) (4) ◽  
pp. 24-36
Author(s):  
N. D. Borshchik
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Food Industry ◽  
Southern Coast ◽  
Recreational Facilities ◽  
Soviet Leadership ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Social ◽  
Health Resorts ◽  
Post War ◽  
Short Time

The article considers little-studied stories in Russian historiography about the post-war state of Yalta — one of the most famous health resorts of the Soviet Union, the «pearl» of the southern coast of Crimea. Based on the analysis of mainly archival sources, the most important measures of the party and Soviet leadership bodies, the heads of garrisons immediately after the withdrawal of the fascist occupation regime were analyzed. It was established that the authorities paid priority attention not only to the destroyed economy and infrastructure, but also to the speedy introduction of all-Union and departmental sanatoriums and recreation houses, other recreational facilities. As a result of their coordinated actions in the region, food industry enterprises, collective farms and cooperative artels, objects of cultural heritage and the social and everyday sphere were put into operation in a short time.

Soviet Tanks, American Sedans: Traces of India’s Cold War-era Hedging Towards the United States, 1966–1971

2021 ◽  
pp. 097492842098309
Author(s):  
Bipin K. Tiwary ◽  
Anubhav Roy
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
Food Aid ◽  
Military Assistance ◽  
Evaluative Study ◽  
Complex Interdependence ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Us ◽  
Food Shortages

Having fought its third war and staring at food shortages, independent India needed to get its act together both militarily and economically by the mid-1960s. With the United States revoking its military assistance and delaying its food aid despite New Delhi’s devaluation of the rupee, India’s newly elected Indira Gandhi government turned to deepen its ties with the Soviet Union in 1966 with the aim of balancing the United States internally through a rearmament campaign and externally through a formal alliance with Moscow. The US formation of a triumvirate with Pakistan and China in India’s neighbourhood only bolstered its intent. Yet India consciously limited the extent of both its balancing strategies and allowed adequate space to simultaneously adopt the contradictory sustenance of its complex interdependence with the United States economically. Did this contrasting choice of strategies constitute India’s recourse to hedging after 1966 until 1971, when it liberated Bangladesh by militarily defeating a US-aligned Pakistan? Utilising a historical-evaluative study of archival data and the contents of a few Bollywood films from the period, this paper seeks to address the question by empirically establishing the extents of India’s balancing of, and complex interdependence with, the United States.

Introduction: Reflections on Baltic Exceptionalism

1989 ◽  
Vol 17 (02) ◽  
pp. 156-163 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrejs Penikis
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Panel Discussion ◽  
Columbia University ◽  
Soviet Leadership ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Key Points ◽  
The Status ◽  
New Thinking ◽  
The Baltic ◽  
Independence Movements

On October 20, 1989 the Harriman Institute's Nationalities and Siberian Studies Program of Columbia University sponsored a panel discussion entitled, “The Baltic Republics Fifty Years After the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.” The panel, consisting of Dr. Allen Lynch, Dr. Stephan Kux, Mr. Jenik Radon and Mr. William Hough, analyzed the current situation in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania as well as in the other republics from a variety of perspectives, and debated the motivations and appropriateness of the response of the Western powers to the growing strength of the various independence movements in the Baltic republics. The following edited transcript of those proceedings points up the complex and contentious nature of the status of the Baltic republics in the era of Gorbachev, in both the domestic (Soviet) and international contexts. Nationalist leaders within the Soviet Union debate the appropriate tactics and pace to pursue their goals. The Soviet leadership dabates the extent to which autonomy may be granted to the nationalities. Western leaders consider their options in responding to the changes in the Soviet Union, changes which necessitate an overhaul of policies nearly a half-century old as well as some “new thinking” on their parts. The discussion centered on two issues: (1) What in general has been the response of the West to nationalist movements in the USSR and how appropriate has that response been? (2) Is there any validity to claims of Baltic “exceptionalism”? The following introduction comments briefly on these issues and places them into perspective by drawing on the discussion and exploring several key points.

‘An Ambiguous Area’: Mongolia in Soviet-Japanese relations in the mid-1930s

2019 ◽  
Vol 54 (3) ◽  
pp. 730-758
Author(s):  
BRIAN BRIDGES
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Far East ◽  
Northern China ◽  
Soviet Leadership ◽  
Mutual Assistance ◽  
Intense Competition ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Japanese Military

AbstractThe Mongolian People's Republic (MPR) became the focus of intense competition between the Soviet Union and Japan in the 1930s, when it was more commonly known as Outer Mongolia. The Soviet Union viewed the MPR as an ideological and strategic ally, and was determined to defend that state against the increasingly adventurist actions of the Japanese military based in northern China. Japanese ambitions to solve the so-called ‘Manmo’ (Manchuria-Mongolia) problem led the Soviets to initiate ever-closer links with the MPR, culminating in the 1936 pact of mutual assistance which was intended to constrain Japanese pressure. Using unpublished Japanese materials as well as Russian and Mongolian sources, this article demonstrates how the Soviet leadership increasingly viewed the MPR as strategically crucial to the defence of the Soviet Far East.

Whither the Cuban economy after recovery? The reform process, upgrading strategies and the question of transition

2002 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 365-395 ◽  
Author(s):  
CLAES BRUNDENIUS
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Development Strategy ◽  
Market Economy ◽  
Average Rate ◽  
Reform Process ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
New Development ◽  
Upgrading Strategies ◽  
Ruling Party

Where is the Cuban economy heading? The economy has been recovering at an average rate of four per cent per year since 1994 (after GDP declined by 35 per cent between 1989 and 1993). Many reforms have been undertaken in the direction of a market economy, but it is far from clear what kind of economy the Cuban ruling party has in mind after recovery. This article discusses the successes and shortcomings of the reform process in Cuba since the downfall of communism in Europe and the Soviet Union. It also addresses the salient issues in what appears to be a new development strategy in Cuba, and what could be said about the reforms and the strategy in the light of the debate on transition ‘ten years after’.

Did the Soviet Union instruct Southeast Asian communists to revolt? New Russian evidence on the Calcutta Youth Conference of February 1948

2009 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 449-469 ◽  
Author(s):  
Larisa Efimova
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Central Committee ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Southeast Asian ◽  
Soviet Leadership ◽  
The Real ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Archival Documents

This article uses recently declassified archival documents from the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (of Bolsheviks) concerning the Calcutta Youth Conference of February 1948. This evidence contradicts speculation that ‘orders from Moscow’ were passed to Southeast Asian communists at this time, helping to spark the rebellions in Indonesia, Malaya, Burma and the Philippines later that year. Secret working papers now available to researchers show no signs that the Soviet leadership planned to call upon Asian communists to rise up against their national bourgeois governments at this point in time. This article outlines the real story behind Soviet involvement in events leading up to the Calcutta Youth Conference, showing both a desire to increase information and links, and yet also a degree of caution over the prospects of local parties.

scholarly journals USSR and Germany: on the Way to June 22, 1941

2020 ◽  
Vol 99 (6) ◽  
pp. 202-213
Author(s):  
Vladimir Schweitzer ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Great Britain ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Soviet Leadership ◽  
German Occupation ◽  
Bilateral Agreements ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Great Patriotic War ◽  
The Way

The article deals with the Soviet-German relations in the period of 1939‒1941. It is shoun that after signing of the Munich agreements in September, 1938, Germany generally defined its strategy of pressure on countries that fit into the Hitler’s concept of "Push to the East". Its victims in 1935 were Czechoslovakia and Poland. After the German occupation of Czechoslovakia, Great Britain and France sought to review the "policy of appeasement" of Hitler and were ready to join the USSR in the search for ways to prevent Hitler's expansion. However, the inconsistency and contradictoriness of this "change of milestones" strengthened the position of the Soviet leadership in favour of reaching agreements with Germany. The summer of 1939 was the apotheosis of fruitless negotiations between the "Troika" (the USSR, Great Britain and France), which objectively prompted Moscow to accept the German proposal for fundamentally new bilateral agreements (the Pact of August 23, 1939). Subsequent events up to June 22, 1941 showed the unreliability of agreements with Nazism, facilitated the fleeting victory of Germany over Poland and France, and the actual isolation of Great Britain. Hitler's attack on the Soviet Union did not remove from the Soviet leadership the historical guilt of being unprepared for war with fascism, for the colossal human and territorial losses of the first stage of the Great Patriotic War

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document